One
by TycadManson
Summary: Spike, having grown from a baby to a teenage dragon, is drafted to fight in a conflict with rebel griffin tribes. Spike is terribly injured during a battle and reaps the consequences afterward. This is based, both on the Metallica song "One" and the book "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo. Be gentle with the reviews, please.


Spike awoke with a start. he tried flailing his limbs in an attempt to ward off enemy combatants that weren't there. Soon, he calmed down enough to know that nothing was there. Spike tried his best to figure out what had happened, but he couldn't. Spike tried to move, but he couldn't. He couldn't feel his arms. Or legs. Or any part of his body.

Spike couldn't even see. Everything was black.

Spike was beginning to worry. Where was he? Had the griffons captured him? Was he drugged? What happened?

Spikes worried were put to rest when he heard a door come open and than close, meaning that he could at least still hear. Spike couldn't tell what was happening, but he could hear the being that had entered the room fiddling around with some equipment that had been placed close to him.

Spike than did his best to try and take in what he could with his ears. He could hear the faint beeping of one of the heart monitors that they normally had in hospitals.

Hospital?

Than it all came rushing back to the young dragon. The battle. The screaming. The gore. The crying. And finally, the last thing that he could recall seeing was a large griffon swinging down upon his head with a wicked mace.

As Spike was recalling these events, he heard several others entering the room.

"Doctor, please tell me there's hope!" asked a concerned voice that Spike could only recognize as Twilight Sparkle.

"Yeah Doc, anything?!" Asked another cracking voice that Spike deduced as Rainbow Dash.

Who Spike thought was the doctor sighed.

"You ladies had better sit down."

After a pause, Spike heard the doctor clear his throat.

"We've done all we could for him. Unfortunately, this is as much as we can do."

"What do you mean, Doc? Is he alright?!" asked Rainbow Dash, worry rising in her voice.

"Well, he's alive. But just barely." Began the doctor. "Spikes cerebrum as suffered massive and irreparable damage from the head-wound he received on the battlefield. He's alive, but he's completely paralyzed. This young dragon will never experience pain or pleasure ever again."

Spike could hear what he could describe as water droplets hitting the ground.

"This young dragon will be as unfeeling and as unmoving as the dead until the day he joins them." finished the doctor.

Spike pondered what this meant. Paralyzed? That couldn't be. It was unfair! Spike couldn't stomach the thought of being nothing more than a piece of meat that just kept on living, doomed to a life of blackness.

Spike tried his best, with all of his willpower to move, to twitch, to do SOMETHING! Let everyone in the room know that he was okay. But he couldn't He could feel no part of his body. It was as if he was in Purgatory.

Spike tried to scream, but nothing came out. There was only the sobbing that soon turned into full blown weeping from the other room.

As soon as the doctor left the room, Rainbow Dash flew across the room at a speed that Twilight had never seen before. She grabbed Spikes limp body and began to scream at him.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, SPIKE?! WAKE UP! JUST WAKE UP! YOU CAN'T STAY LIKE THIS! YOU JUST CAN'T! WE LOVE YOU! ALL OF US! YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO US! WAKE UP, SPIKE! JUST...wake...up..." Rainbow Dash's screaming soon decended into sobbing as she buried her head into the side of Spike's bed.

Twilight couldn't even speak. All she could do was cry into her hooves as she stared at Rainbow Dash and Spike. Twilight had come to love Spike as an older sister would love a younger brother and at times, as a mother would love a son. And here was her son's broken body, the Spike that she knew was being held prisoner inside of his own body. Never to reemerge.

Twilight soon regained enough of her composure to pull Rainbow off of the bed.

"Why Twilight...?"

Twilight said nothing as she held Rainbow Dash. She cradled her head as Rainbow Dash cried into her mane.

"Why him?" He's just a kid!" sobbed Rainbow Dash. "What did he do to deserve this?!"

Twilight couldn't answer her question, she was just as broken, if not more so, than Rainbow Dash and it currently robbed her of the ability to speak.

"I was going to teach him how to fly when his wings matured enough." said Rainbow Dash through shaky breaths. "He would have met somepony! They would have had kids and everything would have been awesome! WHY?! Why this...?"

Once again, Twilight was unable to answer through her own crying.

Spike, through hearing all of this, wanted to cry. He wanted to cry so badly. Not because of his physical state, but putting his dearest friends through all of this. But he couldn't. He had no emotional release. No release at all. All he had was blackness and his thoughts.

Soon, Spike's mind began to run rampant.

"I won't be like this forever, will I?" Spike thought. "I can't live like this! I can't! No, no, I can't! I CAN'T! Twilight?! Rainbow?! Where are you? I can't see! Help me! Oh please, somepony help me! I'm having a nightmare and I can't wake up!"

As these thoughts ran rampant through Spike's mind, his face remained stoic. His body limp. As if he was dead.

Rainbow Dash, after several minutes of unabashed weeping, walked slowly back to Spike's bed and wrapped his body in a tight hug, almost afraid to let go. Twilight followed suit and soon, they were, all three, in a shared embrace.

Shakily, Rainbow Dashed whispered an almost inaudible "I'm so sorry." into Spikes ear. After several minutes, they soon relinquished Spike's body. The both turned around and looked at the clock.

8:26PM.

Rainbow Dash and Twilight nodded towards each other and began to walk to the door. They need to give the grim news to their friends.

Spike heard them walking away and it sent his mind into another panic.

"I don't want to be alone! Please! Don't leave me!" Spike screamed in his head, but it was useless. Soon enough, the door was shut and Spike was left to ponder and to think.

"I don't want to live the rest of my life as a husk! I'd rather die! I might as well be dead anyway! Why are they keeping my alive?! Why don't they just get it over with and kill me!" Spike thought.

Spike had only been conscious for an hour or so and he was already drifting between reality and fantasy. Spike had no way of knowing whether he was even awake or asleep. His thoughts began to drift to happier days. Helping Twilight around the library, trying to get Rarity to notice him as a child, so many thoughts. And here he was, reduced to the living husk that he is now.

"If I had arms, I could kill myself. If I had legs, I could run away. If I had a voice, I could talk and be some sort of company for myself."

Many hours passed with Spike screaming in his mind, Spike's sanity was slowly ebbing away as his emotions continued to pile up. Spike saw no end in sight to this suffering, this suffering that required no physical pain at all and yet was more tortures than whatever fates that even the darkest souls of Equestrian were damned too, after death

Spike was pent up inside of himself... with no way out.

Spike had no mouth, and all he wanted to do was scream.


End file.
